My head spins when I see news reports about women’s earnings today.  Can it be true that women earn 79  cents for every dollar men bring home?  Back in 1982, it was even worse.  About 61.7% of what men took home.  (As you’ll see, for me, the pay difference was even worse.) I was managing editor of an International Thomson publication called Brandon’s Shipper & Forwarder, 30 years old, working on the 31st floor of the World Trade Center in NYC — the highest placed female journalist in the national transportation arena. And I loved my job!  What wasn’t there to...

I’m back in 1972, again, the week before I returned to Camp Hillcroft as a counselor/assistant dance instructor. I was catching up on sleep at home in Riverdale,  recharging after sophomore year. (That was when I took Chem 101 to satisfy my science requirement, and burnt a hole in my favorite maroon leotard as I clumsily titrated with sulphuric acid… the one time that I was dressed for after-lab dance club bra-less… The splashing acid made my right nipple tingle and that’s when the unflappable Berlin-born Dr. Ernst Berliner threw a cold wet towel at me to cool things...

thetab.com/us/princeton/2015/10/19/cruz-is-colonial-92-so-we-asked-members-what-they-think-about-him-375 What… you haven’t heard my story about the time that Debi, Hilary, Cecilia and I headed over to Princeton for a Colonial Club party? All  because Cecilia told us her new boyfriend looked exactly like James Taylor and she had promised to invite her Bryn Mawr pals to add to the fun! I can’t remember how we got there.  I do remember  it was a Friday night in Spring, 1972 — weeks after getting a written warning for hitchhiking to the campus, where I had tackled some dusty...

In the carefully edited life of Pamela Gilbert-Bugbee, you get the mistaken impression that I grew up in Riverdale (NW Bronx) and only attended conspicuously numbered public schools before graduating from the High School of Music and Art — well, before  it got renamed. Of course, everyone needs a cut-off somewhere.  And even though I aced the fourth grade spelling bee at Village School in Syosset, I bury this victory because only my relatives, on a need-to-know basis, can confirm that from kindergarten through sixth grade, I attended a conspicuously un-numbered public school. Outside of the...

Back, long ago, even before I wore pink poodle barrettes in my hair … the  name debate began. My mother judiciously guarded her first choice, while my father was busy polling the folks at work. Raking through ancient memories, I can’t remember clearly my Dad’s take on this subject  …  Just that he loved the name Debbie … Deborah.  Maybe it was part of the Debbie Reynolds magic that made this beautiful name so very popular back then.  Not to overlook the majesty of the Old Testament birthright. It’s a fabulous name and is parked way up there on my evolving Girls...